Tag: bathroom

Hasta La Vista, Juan

For all that our lot lacks in width, it makes up for in depth. Just take a gander at the space we have available for our upcoming backyard rehab. I’d estimate that the lot is at least three times deeper than it is wide. This is great! Except for the fact that our bathroom window looks directly into our neighbor’s carport/side door. Creepy.

So here we have the bathroom (photo lazily plucked from my home tour), note the nasty yellowish mini-blinds:

When we moved in, there was a ton of very tall and thick bamboo (some of it sickly/dead) that grew well past the window and blocked any visibility. But during the house-painting process, we weeded out the sickly pieces and the bamboo got chopped fairly short. One day we arrived at home to find out that our neighbor had removed it altogether! (Pretty sure it was on our property… but whatever…) We were left with nothing but extremely dirty mini-blinds to prevent any kind of peep-show from happening. We do not want to build that close of a relationship with our Spanish-speaking neighbor.

(Ah, now the post title makes sense…)

This photo not only shows how terrible the artificial light is during a cloudy day (in our case, last Saturday, you may have heard about the day when 100 tornadoes touched down in Kansas. Luckily our city was spared) or when it’s dark outside, but… “Oh, hello there!” You can see all up in our neighbors’ business.

As I mentioned before, the mini-blinds were dis-gus-ting. They had to come down. But we had to come up with another solution. So, as an alternative I took my inspiration from Young House Love (as usual) and got some window-frosting film from Home Depot. Following their hilarious photo-based instructions here we successfully applied it to the windows. Let’s just say it wan’t HARD, but it was no piece of cake either. But these two small panes were a great opportunity for our first shot, and it turned out OK.

Now, the mini-blinds are stored in the basement, with all the hardware attached in a ziplock baggie, just in case someone wants to put them back up someday. I surely won’t.

Doesn’t the room look nicer without all that junk off of the window? Let me tell you, it is much less claustrophobic. Still needs to be touched up where I removed the hardware. The paint can is literally sitting in the bathroom, I just have to do it. I’ll probably take care of it this weekend.

Now if only we could do something about that horrific lighting fixture above the sink… Naturally… I have my ideas for it…

Bathroom Inspiration

As soon as I saw this picture on Pinterest, I knew what was in store for my bathroom. In all fairness and proper blogging etiquette, the original pic is from Kohler Talk. A blog about bathrooms, pretty much exclusively. What!

Anyway, We removed the doors from the cabinet above the toilet and rearranged everything. We have too many towels. Towels from our wedding that we didn’t ask for (actually these are so nice, but HUGE and take up a lot of space even folder), random green towels that showed up in my apartment a few years ago (I never found out where they came from) among others. Nobody will ever complain about not being able to dry off at my house.

This all started by me being totally jealous of John and Sherry’s kitchen renno but lacking the funds or ability to do anything about I have decided to do minor upgrades on the bathroom. As part of my larger vision, one cabinet with open shelving will make the place feel more fancy-schmancy. Also, you can see the open cabinet in the mirror while you’re on the jon, which gives you something nice to look at while being otherwise occupied.

Also included on the to-do list:

  • replace hardware throughout the bathroom with brushed nickel knobs (instead of cheapo white plastic)
  • figure out something as far as the shower curtain is concerned
  • fill in awkward cheap-looking seams on the cabinet to make the discount-contractor’s installation look as upscale as possible
  • dress the window… somehow… with something…
  • frost the window so we can ditch the dirty mini-blinds!

Baby steps though. Right now we need to paint the back of the cabinet. I hope to have this little project done by the end of the weekend!

 

Disappointed In: Towels

I always write “show and tell” posts about what I got at the thrift store recently and whatnot, but I thought I’d start a series. I’m not saying this whole week will be “Disappointed In” posts, just, whenever I write one I’ll tag it the same way, that way you can see all my bad purchases >:o

Actually, this inaugural Disappointed In post isn’t something I bought myself, which takes the sting off a little bit, but it is something I picked out (it was on my wedding registry) so, the fact that someone else spent money on something that hasn’t held up is still a bummer. Plus, if the whole batch was like this, hundreds of people probably got some bum product.

This towel is from Target’s “Home” collection circa May 2010. As you can see, the hem totally failed. And I think two out of four of our towels did this, but this is the worst one.  Thing is, before you say “You’ve had it almost a year!” I didn’t use them until July and this happened after two or three washings. Sad face.

My Kohl’s “Sonoma Lifestyle” towels, however, I got in 2007 are still goin’ strong. Still plush and absorbent, and the color hasn’t faded or anything. It’s that’s definitely the brand I’m going to stick with from now on.

On a happier note, we’re doing a little hallway bonding activity.

Here are our brackets, along with Adam (#1 commenter here on MFS) and our neighbor to the west (his wife didn’t fill one out). There’s a new guy moving in across the hallway soon and we’ll give him one as a welcoming present. These are taped in the hallway and Doug’s pumped about meticulously tracking the winners and losers of every game. I am the only one here who didn’t pick KU to go all the way. Gotta stand out, right?

Got any bum products you’re disappointed in? If you email me a pic or two, you could star in a guest blog!

Who’s gonna win the College Basketball championship?